Massive Voodoo - Private Practice - Colouristo

Dear Guys,

Me and my Pumpkin Painter friends Lisa “Morgaine” and Andi “Androsch” had the great chance to have an impressive private practice session at the jungle of Massive Voodoo.

With this report I would like to share my personal experience gained out of this remarkable session with the two well-known masters Roman & Raffa.

For additional impressions of the session please also have a look at the reports of Morgaine and Androsch on our Pumpkin Painter blog.

MY BACKGROUND

First of all I have to tell you that I am a kind of rookie regarding painting miniatures. Years ago I was a passionate painter using the pen and aquarelle colours. But due to my intensive business travels and my kids the free time is very limited and priorities have changed. Nevertheless, due to my great friends Andi (Androsch) and Kurti (Darkezekiel) I started to learn about this wonderful hobby and they gave me the best possible support to develop my first skills in creating my first ideas.

THANKS MY FRIENDS!

I really love to be creative and so my interest in this hobby nearly exploded. It is the perfect combination for me of sculptures and painting.

Together with my first experiences gained during the very helpful “Jarhead’s beginner painting class” I was now in the position to put my ideas into reality. This means, my biggest interest is to tell a story with each of my mini’s. This is my way of creativity within this hobby. So my focus was more on the scene than on the perfect painting execution. Easy to say if you have just painted 4 figures so far :) !

To be honest, based on the very good feedback to my starting figures including the first rewards on Herzog von Bayern and Monte San Savino I felt great.

But during my last project I got more and more the feeling that I am not really able to handle the dilution of my colours right and that I used the dilution each time in a different way. In addition, I have to mention that I love to and that I was used to paint in a very realistic way.

Now you can maybe imagine that I was not completely satisfied. I am quite ambitious in all things I do, so I knew I had to satisfy “my thirst for more”.

The solution to this was clear – the only way is, to learn from the best and also passionate painters – Roman & Raffa!

THE BEGINNING OF THE PRIVATE SESSION

The biggest key success factor of our session were the people involved – Roman, Raffa and very important to highlight also Anna & Anci! They created the basis for the unique atmosphere of hospitality which is so needed to ensure big improvement.

I brought some pre-prepared figures with me, and EXTREMLY HIGH EXPECTATIONS!!!

Which scene will I create, which figure will we choose for the private lesson, how far will we complete the figure & the base, how good will I increase my skills, what is really possible, and so on …

And what can I say – Already right from the beginning I learned a lot!

After telling the masters my endless expectations and what I think of the level of my skills, Roman & Raffa gave me their thoughts and what should be the focus of my private improvement.

AND THEY WERE COMPLETELY RIGHT!

Based on their recommendation we chose the wonderful figure of “Bugne – L’ogre moussaillon” from figone.

Their next recommendation followed soon: Concentrate on the figure within the private session and leave the base for later. Uupps. This was not what I expected. But I trust in them very much, so I had to slow down my inner over-motivation. Not so easy if you know me :)

PRE-PREPARATION

Also during this phase I improved immense in my skills and my inner believes. I knew already that a very good pre-preparation of the figure is a must to achieve an excellent result. But so far I had the impression that this part is not one of my strengths and that I am not patient enough for this for me so “boring” work.

And again a huge change happened to me. Using the right materials and tools it was much easier than I had experienced so far. The result was exciting to me, and it was unbelievable for me. A big step of motivation for myself!

After the right base coating my figure looked like this:

THE PAINTING

I do not want to tell you all the secrets we learned in the private session, because I think this is the value and business of Roman & Raffa. They shared already a lot with us in their Massive Voodoo blog. But the focus for my private session was “The right process to create my figures” and to learn “The correct painting techniques”.

So I started with a short sketch of my idea … which looks like this, also including my whished colour scheme:

Would I be able to achieve my result looking like this, and with good quality? Oh, always this ambitious inner force!

Now the journey goes on and I followed all advises from the masters.

Just have a look of the following pictures to get your own impressions.

Honestly, I gave my best and it cost me a lot of energy to keep this level in line with my expected results.

THE DEEP ABYSS

In between I had a strange point in progress. I got completely lost, and I had the feeling I had no chance to find all the different colours of the skin I needed to do my first shadows and highlights.

I was afraid, that my choice of the skin basic colours was too complicated for me. And I started to feel uncomfortable and got the impression of losing the control.

Immediately Roman & Raffa checked my situation and they gave me the perfect inputs and support needed at that situation to gain the needed self-confidence.

WHAT SHALL I SAY – IT WORKED !!!!!!!

The figure became more and more lively. And I started to realise, hey some cool improvement is happening to me.

Suddenly I had the strong feeling, things happen the way I wanted it. Finding the right dilution and the right brush movement was much easier than before.

THE FINISHING

Roman & Raffa shared their thoughts with us regarding their so called “Last 10%” and it was astonishing to see the difference in the result following their ideas.

THE SUMMARY

I have to say it was absolute mind-blowing how all of us have improved from our personal point of view. Even our so experienced Andi improved a lot. And it was great for all of us to get the personal feedback from our teachers.

At the end I will bring you once again a comparison of my sketch and the actual status of my mini. I am more than happy with the result and very proud of myself following the path of Roman & Raffa, handling my inner ambitious forces, and also keeping my line of creativity to reach MY story.

I think not that bad for my 5^th mini :)

I hope I will soon find the right time to finish my mini including the base. The first step in the right direction is done, the rest just belongs to me.

And what I learned out of this course:

YOU ARE ABLE TO HANDLE IT! JUST FOLLOW YOUR OWN WAY, KEEP SOME BASIC THINGS IN MIND, AND PAINT, PAINT, PAINT, PAINT, … AND YOUR PERSONAL DESIRED RESULT WILL BE THERE.

I hope my open words give you an impression of how wonderful this private session was. So whenever you want to improve your way of painting figures, I can just recommend you to join a private session with Roman & Raffa.

I would like to thank especially the two of you – ROMAN & RAFFA – It was an unbelievable experience and you definitely excelled my personal expectations!

And I also want to thank my Pumpkin Painter Friends who joined this private session and the jealous ones waiting at home. Thanks to you as well, because you are one of my main reasons why I love this hobby so much already. It is always such a pleasure spending time with all of you. (Lisa, Hanna, Sandra, Andi, Kurti und Markus!)

Yours

Oliver aka “Colouristo”